Posts Tagged abolitionists

It’s hard to deny that the religious right has been on the wane. Need some proof?

Once-prominent religious leaders like Pat Robertson are now viewed as fringe radicals by many conservative elites and “ordinary people” alike. Social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been largely dismissed as secondary by tea partiers and Republican politicians. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican voters preferred the irreligious “pragmatism” of John McCain to the Bible-belt fervor of Mike Huckabee.

As author Brett McCracken recently said in an interview with yours truly, aligning oneself with the religious right has become increasingly “unhip.”

But some don’t see such a change as an overall indictment of the movement itself. For Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, authors of the new book, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era, such a change is “less a value judgment than a fact of life.” Despite some fundamental flaws in the religious right’s approach, Gerson and Wehner see the energetic movement of yore as a highly positive, right-time-right-place kind of thing.

But the times they are a-changin’.

We are in a moment of transition, say Gerson and Wehner. The same Christians who aligned themselves with the Religious Right now find little use or relevance in its tactics or execution. Strict conservative political theology has been by and large replaced by universalist political activism. Social conservatism has been subtly supplanted by a blurry, left-leaning social justice. The cutting, careless words of Pat Robertson has been overshadowed by the moderate tone of Rick Warren.

But although the political scene is changing (and necessarily so), Gerson and Wehner see more confusion in the shift than they do clarity. For them, this is a prime opportunity for conservatives (and everyone else) to reexamine the proper relationship between religion and politics. Now, they argue, is not only a time for adaptation, but also for introspection.

The aim, therefore, is to crystalize a proper Christian approach to politics — one that takes full account of theological fundamentals, proper Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll write a full review in the near future, but for the moment I just wanted to highlight a few of the book’s ideas about the “morality of human rights.” There is an entire chapter on the subject, in which the authors argue that although we should be careful about how religion feeds into politics, we should also recognize that religion should play arole in shaping our political understanding of human rights.

This view is based on the following understanding about human nature and morality:

What truly marks human beings is the tendency to care for self, family, clan, tribe, race, religion, nation. To care for every human being would appear to require a moral law. To sacrifice for the rights of other human beings — merely because they are human beings — would appear to require a holy law.

Gerson and Wehner go on to explain that “the contribution of religion to this [moral law] debate is narrow but essential,” meaning that although plenty of religious beliefs may not yield to political synthesis (e.g. eschatology, ecclesiology), some of them do and must (e.g. “beliefs about human worth, human nature, and human destiny”).

As the authors explain:

The Christian ideal of human dignity is important precisely because it transcends culture. It has proven its ability to stand in judgment of many cultures, including our own. The theologian Max Stackhouse calls this “one of the greatest revolutions in the history of humanity”… Religious people have a unique ability to stand outside the prison of culture and call attention to a set of universal ideals. In other words, they can represent, in the kingdoms of this world, the values of another Kingdom.

This view obviously rejects any sort of cultural or religious relativism (note the referral to “a set of universal ideals”). For the Christian, there is a right and wrong that applies to everyone, regardless of culture, race, or Read the rest of this entry »